Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

Hi. If tinnitus is due to damaged hair cells...then logically, would tinnitus diminish as we age as the hair cells die off?

 

Nope, it just gets worse as you get older, but you habituate again.

As the hair cells get more damaged the connection between the hair cells and the brain diminishes. When they die the connection to the brain is gone. Tinnitus occurs because of that loss of connection.

 

Hi Rb2014... many thanks for your reply. I was wondering if u could just explain it a bit more... i am a little new to this. If the "connection" is gone..u mention tinnitus occurs...but when/why does true hearing loss occur.

Also...just to reiterate, there is no noise damage i am being exposed to...to cause a worsening of tinnitus.

 

hearing loss can occur for many reasons. It can be genetic where your hearing degrades faster over time, it can be to noise, or it can be to old age. Everyone loses their hearing as they get older. There are nerves between the hair cells and your brain. When you lose lets say 30 db on a frequency, the brain turns up the gain and you get to hear that frequency. Thats when tinnitus occurs. You lose too many hear cells and your brain just turns up the gain even more. As we get older we lose more and more hair cells for a variety of reasons and you end up with tinnitus. I would hazard to guess that most people end up with tinnitus some earlier than others, just depending on circumstances

 

Cutting and pasting a reply I made a few days ago on this same topic:

Tinnitus most likely arises from an inappropriate brain response to a loss of auditory input. Once this happens, even if the "false signals" stop tinnitus doesn't necessarily go away.

More than likely it is an overactive auditory cortex that is producing the tinnitus sound than hair cells constantly firing.

Think of it this way, there is damage to either the hair cells or nerve fibers causing a loss of input to the brain, instead of moving on the brain overreacts and starts producing a sound to fill in that gap, over time this gets hardwired in the brain and it becomes permanent, the new 'silence'.

 

I get this, @Alue . Then again, I wonder ... isn't it the brain/central nervous system's job to "hear" and "interpret" the signals (incoming sound waves/stimulated hair cells, synaptic connections to the auditory nerve, etc.) coming in from outside the ear, the sounds generated in the world?

And then, of course, the CNS part must be capable of also producing (or is always in a state of "humming") with all the various sound frequencies, etc. as a response to the incoming signals, and then it sends these "inner sounds" to all the different brain areas for processing, understanding, emotional reacting, etc.

But might not a permanently inflamed and fired up auditory nerve be the source for the brain's "sound production" or "response" that is known as tinnitus???

And in people whose tinnitus goes up and down, or on and off, it could be the result of the auditory nerve either being more or less inflamed/excitatory on that particular day??? Sort of how people with so-called "autoimmune" arthritis also have their good and bad inflammation days??

Because, in my ears, if I take my finger and "strum" the external ear cartilage with sufficient force, I can MAKE the sound generate, exactly like a plucked guitar string. I am CONVINCED that my acoustic nerves are inflamed in there, and causing lots of this mayhem.

Hey, @Steve , I know I keep tagging you. But I'd be interested in this question too, as part of the Dots investigating/"somatic" questions ... Thanks!

 

No problem at all

The mechanisms of somatic tinnitus will be a good topic, I like it. Nice to be able to make a model that's easy for people to reference and help to understand a little more about how it happens - plus what can be done to help.

 

Hello Bill,

Good question. I'm interested in who told you or where you found/read that hair cells are significantly the main cause for a developed ringing inside the brain due to damage?

 

Hi nick. It was my ENT when i first saw him about the issue.